Artistic Vision
by Sir Gimp of Baath
Summary: [HARUHI SUZUMIYA] Haruhi helps Kyon edit the second SOSdan movie, but he ends up getting a little more help than he had initially expected.


This has probably been done before, but it's hard to tell because HARUHI SUZUMIYA DESPERATELY NEEDS A CATEGORY. Maybe if I yell about it loud enough I can force it to happen... . 

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After _The Adventures of Asahina Mikuru_, a second movie was inevitable. Haruhi, as always, was the Ultra Director and "supreme artistic talent" of the movie. Yuki, Mikuru, and Itsuki acted. Everything else was done by me.

The camera work was, I'll admit, better than last time. The strange jump-cuts and pointless panning up toward the sky were gone, or at least not as noticeable. My little sister's cat didn't start talking, and the teachers didn't interrupt us during a shoot. Maybe Yuki was helping keep that sort of thing from happening, maybe Haruhi did it subconsciously, I don't know.

But after a week of filming we had twice the amount of footage than we needed, and I was the editor. By the time that I was finally able to start up the computer and edit, the day before the Cultural Festival, it was five o'clock and everyone but Haruhi had already left.

"You might as well go home now, Haruhi. I guess I'll just pull another all-nighter and get this done. I'm prepared this time." I pulled out a few energy drinks from my bag and set them on the computer desk.

"Certainly not, Kyon!" She grabbed one of my energy drinks and held it possessively. "Your sloppy editing job is the reason the last movie failed! I need to stay here and make sure that you're following my artistic vision!

"So you're going to stay here all night too?" Great. Just what I needed. Haruhi, hopped up on two or three energy drinks at 2 AM, just might be the end of the world.

But when she nodded emphatically and pulled up another chair next to the computer, I didn't argue. It wouldn't have done any good. I just had to get through the night and try to enjoy her company.

As the computer booted up, I studied Haruhi. She was staring intently at the can in her hand, as if she was trying to open it with her mind. The really scary fact was that she probably COULD open it with her mind, or at least make it so that it was an ancient relic of a lost civilization instead of a humble soda can. The lines on her face seemed to intensify; she wasn't quite frowning, but it was something close. She had her hair pulled back in a ponytail, which she had been doing more and more recently in our senior year, so I could see the skin in her neck stretched out over her collarbones. It all made her look tense, but Haruhi's emotions were more alien to me than Yuki's, so I quit trying to read her and began to sift through five hours of bad samurai film footage.

Fortunately, the self-proclaimed Ultra Director didn't want to put ALL of the crap that we shot in. Unfortunately, she wanted to put in all of the footage that I didn't. "Kyon!" she would shout at random intervals, "How dare you delete that! It showcases my directorial genius!" The next scene, she'd yell, "Kyon! Don't keep that! You shot it badly!"

I was used to this kind of abuse by now. Actually, I found it comforting. When Haruhi ISN'T nagging at me about one thing or another, I know that something is wrong. Besides, she only seems to be happy when she has something to brag or complain about.

I tried to put in as much of Yuki's scenes as I could, because she was the only one of the three that could actually wield a sword properly. Haruhi, of course, insisted on putting Asahina in the spotlight again, for "crowd appeal". I really don't know why I took so much interest in how good the movie would look when it was finished—after all, it was going to be pretty bad either way—but I do know how to manipulate the brigade leader pretty well.

"Haruhi… You did a really good job when you wrote Yuki's character. Every samurai movie has to have a sullen, quiet antihero character. Crowds love that."

She looked at me with yet another undefinable expression on her face, something similar to being shocked and happy at the same time. After a second or two, her trademark I'm-going-to-suggest-something-crazy-now-and-you're-going-to-go-along-with-it-because-I'm-Haruhi-Suzumiya grin came back.

"Okay, Kyon! I just had a great idea! I'll make Yuki the star now! Mikuru-chan is comic relief, and Koizumi's the villain. Now re-edit it!"

"Alright, fine." The editing was going faster than I had expected, and I was prepared to stay the whole night anyway, so this new order didn't bother me too much. But I did need a break, because I'd been sitting here for two hours and my energy drinks didn't last very long when I had to share them with someone else. "I'll go get drinks."

"I'm coming along! I don't trust you to get the kind of drink I like, Kyon. And besides, I don't like being alone in that room. What brigade leader sits in an empty room?" She stood up and grabbed my hand. "Come on!"

If there's one thing I've learned in my two and a half years of being Haruhi Suzumiya's personal minion, it's how to get dragged around without pain. Being such a good athlete, she can be hard to keep up with sometimes, but necessity is a performance enhancer.

I was all worn out by the time we reached the school's perpetually open bank of vending machines. Haruhi, surprisingly, offered to pay.

"I need practice for when I become a benevolent dictator!" she exclaimed cheerfully as she plunked coins into the slot.

Apparently, the run out here had tired her out as well, because she didn't elect to sprint back. She grabbed my wrist as if she were going to, but we walked side-by-side. It actually felt pretty nice.

Right in front of the door of the SOS-dan clubroom, she suddenly stopped walking. I heard a quiet voice say "Kyon?" It took me a second to realize it was Haruhi's.

Remember how I said it sets off alarm bells when Haruhi isn't nagging me about something? Those bells were ringing very loudly, but I swallowed my worry and replied as calmly as I could. The fate of the world, as it always was when I dealt with Haruhi, was at stake.

"Kyon, do you ever have dreams about me?" The question threw me off-guard. I thought that she would have forgotten the last time, the time that the whole world was sealed in Closed Space, the time that Haruhi and I…

…I didn't want to think about it. "What are you talking about, dan-chou?"

"Dreams." Her hand slid down my wrist and gripped my fingers. "Kyon, all this reminds me of a dream I had, where we were alone in the school late at night, and I was dragging you around the same way…"

My only hope of saving reality was to appeal to her love of the paranormal. "Maybe it was a prophetic dream. Maybe it was a visitation by a spirit?"

"Kyon, I know you don't believe in that stuff." She looked off into the distance distractedly. "Only in the dream there were these monsters running around, and we couldn't escape… Kyon-kun, you didn't answer my question."

I had nothing else left to say. No diversionary tactics, no more flattery, no more bluffing. So I answered her in the only way I knew how.

She didn't really have time to react as I cradled her head in my hands, pulled my face down to hers, and kissed her on the lips. I had been wanting to do this for months, and never got the perfect opportunity for it until now.

Besides, she had her hair in a ponytail. How could I resist?

I was glad that I got to pay attention to the kiss this time without worrying about the celestials killing us. This time, the memory would last. I was sure of it. The only time pressure we had was the looming deadline of the cultural festival, but we both knew that that could wait, so it was a long time before our lips separated.

She was not as shocked as I'd expected, even hoped, her to be. Instead, she had that grin, that horrible and wonderful grin that makes her who she is. That damn grin was the thing that made me fall in love with her, and was often the thing that kept me from leaving her side just when she became the most insufferable.

Of course, being Haruhi, she just couldn't let the grin speak for itself. "So you DO dream about me! Kyon, you get a demerit for withholding important information from the brigade leader! Your penalty is…" She stared at me intently for a few heartbeats while I wondered if I should apologize or not. "Your punishment is to make out with me some more." With that, she dragged me back into the club room and slammed the door.

Needless to say, the editing went very slowly the rest of the night. I didn't really mind.

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Review if you'd like to.  



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